New Meriam-Webster definition: Trumpery: "worthless nonsense"

[CousinIT]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trumpery

Definition of trumpery
1
a : worthless nonsense
b : trivial or useless articles : junk
* a wagon loaded with household trumpery — Washington Irving

2
archaic : tawdry finery

[dalton99a]

1. Original meaning was "deceit or fraud"

How appropriate

[question everything]

2. Add this to Colbert truthiness

except that Colbert was tongue in cheek..

[frazzled]

3. Not a new definition

according to their own etymology, the sense of "worthless nonsense" dates all the way back to the mid-15th century and "artciles of useless value" to the mid-16th century.

Trumpery derives from the Middle English trompery and ultimately from the Middle French tromper, meaning "to deceive." (You can see the meaning of this root reflected in the French phrase trompe-l'oeil-literally, "deceives the eye"-which in English refers to a style of painting with photographically realistic detail.) Trumpery first appeared in English in the mid-15th century with the meanings "deceit or fraud" (a sense that is now obsolete) and "worthless nonsense." Less than 100 years later, it was being applied to material objects of little or no value. The verb phrase trump up means "to concoct with the intent to deceive," but there is most likely no etymological connection between this phrase and trumpery.

[alterfurz]

4. trumpery, n. & a.